The Sunday Mass Obligation in a Time of Liturgical Crisis (Part 3): Should the Novus Ordo Be Avoided as a Matter of Principle?

There are various ways of approaching this question, but at the end of the day, the answer is: Yes.

Photo by Hara Gopal (source)

This is the third in a four-part series. The others: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4.

Inherently wrong?

I understand there is a diversity of opinion on this question and that many readers may disagree with me, by having either a more generous attitude toward the Novus Ordo, or a stricter disapproval of it.¹ My disapproval is already rather strict, as will be seen, but I do not believe it is possible for a Catholic to maintain that the Novus Ordo is necessarily or in itself invalid, heretical, or sacrilegious.² Rather, it carries with it a continual risk of having one or another of these defects, and, in any case, it always lacks fittingness or suitability against the backdrop of Catholic tradition and in view of the dignity of the Most Holy Sacrament; and that is cause enough to avoid it altogether.

There is not—and in my opinion could not in principle be—any actual (positive) heresy in the Novus Ordo. Its texts are often inadequate and vague, but they need not be construed in a heretical way. It is unfortunate that some less educated traditionalists jump to hasty conclusions from the fact that many modern Catholics, clerical and lay, undoubtedly do hold heretical views, and sometimes even attribute them to the Novus Ordo. But if one simply takes the liturgical texts one by one and examines them, a Catholic sense can always be given to them. The real problems lie elsewhere—in the massive insufficiency of the texts, rubrics, signs, and music to convey the fullness of the Catholic Faith, and to do so in harmony with the particular ways in which this fullness providentially unfolded in the West.